reflections

One of my greatest pleasures as a web designer is getting the chance to refine my craft but, in contrast to that, one of my greatest burdens is the the number of ridiculous questions that clients have presented me with in the past! Given how long the Internet has been around, and considering the sheer number of sites on the web, you would think that everybody would have at least a basic knowledge of how it all works - but you’d be wrong!

Clients can’t always be expected to understand the complex stuff though - that’s why they pay a designer. But sometimes it would be so much easier if they’d just get a grip!

You’ll need a large spoonful of patience if you’re not going to start alienating your own clients though, because you’re the one with the knowledge. Treat them gently, especially if it’s the first time that they’ve had a web site built! If you know what to expect though, then it should help you deal with the questions when they come!

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So, yesterday’s top story was the bad judgement call over at Digg - which I managed to miss entirely, as I was handing out flyers to promote Britster at Internet World 2007 in London!

The story was summed up nicely in a few posts on Mashable. How Digg went out of control, the disaster in detail, and the aftermath - along with an amusing follow-up or two. Thanks Pete!

Basically, more than a million users turned on Digg’s management for removing stories relating to the release of an encryption key for HD-DVD. As a result of what the users saw as a betrayal, Digg ended up experiencing it’s own ‘Digg Effect’ first-hand!

The key (for the benefit of those who don’t know) is a series of numbers which will unlock copy-protected HD-DVD movies. The MPAA is obviously against this, and Diggers absolutely hate the MPAA and RIAA.

Kevin Rose (with his tail firmly between his legs) ended up by posting an apology on the Digg blog:

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation […] power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use […]. So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Aside from being a little melodramatic, I’m not totally convinced that this will do him much good. Diggers have got really pissed about the situation, with many of them apparently not realising that the site was modertated at all.

I think only time will tell if the golden-boy of blogg favourites - and the site that the blogger built - is done for.

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